(Photo by Juan Ocampo/Getty Images)

Looking back at the 2008-09 season for the Los Angeles Kings, what likely stands out to most is their 14th place finish in the fifteen-team Western Conference, not to mention the fact that they failed to qualify for the playoffs for the sixth consecutive season.

Indeed, to many, that is nothing more than utter failure and it is difficult to argue with that.

But Kings President/General Manager Dean Lombardi is looking beyond the standings to gauge his team’s progress since the 2007-08 season and he is looking at his team’s marked improvement on defense. One look at the numbers tells much of the story.

The 2007-08 Kings gave up goals in bunches, ranking 28th in the thirty-team National Hockey League, giving up 3.21 goals per game. They were also ranked dead last in penalty-killing with a 78.0% rating.

To coin a phrase, “Oh, what a difference a year makes," as the 2008-09 Kings made dramatic improvements in their own end, ranking eleventh on defense, allowing 2.76 goals per game and jumping up to seventh in penalty-killing with an 82.9% rating.

Anyone would be very hard-pressed to argue that, based on those numbers, that the Kings have not improved drastically on defense, which was something the Kings focused on.

“I think one thing, very clearly, that we had to get done, regardless of personnel changes, we felt that with some structure that we could improve our goals against,” Lombardi said in an interview on June 13. “That was the number one priority. I don’t care how much offense—we could’ve had [Wayne] Gretzky, [Mark] Messier, [Brett] Hull and [Mike] Bossy up front, but if we’re going to give up the chances we were giving up the last two years, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

“We had to start getting some structure, getting an identity on the back end and put that in our minor league system, similar to what New Jersey has done,” added Lombardi. “We have to establish an identity in terms of how we’re going to play defensively and do things right.”

Doing things right was the message sent to the players on day one of the Kings’ 2008-09 training camp, as head coach Terry Murray preached defensive play as soon as the players hit the ice for the first time.

“Murph [Terry Murray] came in and established that from day one, drawing the dangerous area, the home plate, with the spray paint,” said Lombardi. “That started on day one, that we will start doing things right in our own end. There were some attractive results there. Our shots against were one of the lowest in the league. Our goals against, for a good part of the season, was near the top of the league.”

The Kings are also trying to build accountability on defense into the culture throughout their system.

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